Friday, March 30, 2012

Art,Heart,Propaganda - Cartoons!

A few days ago the Globe, which usually runs reasonably decent cartoons, ran this piece of excrement:



I generally like cartoons. They grab you, usually in a familiar way but very occasionally with a recognition of something I hadn't thought of. The characters get established, the villians well known to the point where you can sort of see where they are coming from.

Propaganda is a different matter. The characters are shaded to tell a story. Standard images are thrown in to incite either affection or rage. The central object is altered to something that it simply is not. Characters are added that make no sense, but seem to if you don't think. What is that sea around the hold lady? Who is she? How can the Ryan plan help her? There are simply no reasonable answers to any of these questions. Instead, replacing a system with guaranteed coverage with something strange and probably worthless is shown as a life preserver. Whose life? There is no answer.

In our time, making sense has been abandoned by a movement based on scaring those with a little into believing that their pittance is being threatened by those with a bit less, all in the service of those with far too much.

But you knew all this. So we look at simpler cartoons



Toles used to be great. He had a brainless, destructive but essentially not vicious Reagan who ran around as captain of a toy spaceship during SDI days that really clarified the absurdity of the whole thing. This just fails because Romney doesn't drink, and his attempts at being normal would have failed 3 steps back.

Which is to say, as always, the difference between propaganda & truth is that propaganda is easier & pays better. Me? I produce crap & earn nothing for it.



So how about a comment or 2?



I'll tell you her name.Maybe she has a cute granddaughter.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those things could put an eye out.

Anonymous said...

And yet I'd still like to know her name.

Downpuppy said...

Sure.
Svetlana Nikolaevna Zakharenko.

Anonymous said...

Dogs, cats, hamsters, fish, parrots - who do you prefer? Or perhaps what that exotic animals - snakes, crocodiles, lizards, monkeys?